Elizabeth Strout Quotes - Page 2

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• In a way, I'm very interested in writing about Maine, because I think Maine represents its own kind of history. It's the oldest state, and it's the whitest state.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Writing, Thinking, Maine

  6 Copy quote

• And it was too late. No one wants to believe something is too late, but it is always becoming too late, and then it is.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Life, Believe, Too Late

  Elizabeth Strout (2013). “The Burgess Boys: A Novel”, p.246, Random House

  5 Copy quote

• No exchange rate for the confidence of youth.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Youth, Rate

  Elizabeth Strout (2013). “The Burgess Boys”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• But after a certain point in a marriage, you stopped having a certain kind of fight, Olive thought, because when the years behind you were more than the years in front of you, things were different.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Fighting, Years, Different

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.122, Random House

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• He wanted to put his arms around her, but she had a darkness that seemed to stand beside her like an acquaintance that would not go away.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Darkness, Going Away, Arms

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.6, Random House

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• It’s just that I’m the kind of person,' Rebecca continued, 'that thinks if you took a map of the whole world and put a pin in it for every person, there wouldn’t be a pin for me.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Thinking, World, Maps

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.236, Random House

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• Oh, gosh, Olive. I'm so embarrassed." "No need to be," Olive tells her. "We all want to kill someone at some point." (179)

  Elizabeth Strout

  Want, Olives, Needs

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• Sometimes, like now, Olive had a sense of just how desperately hard every person in the world was working to get what they needed. For most, it was a sense of safety, in the sea of terror that life increasingly became. (211)

  Elizabeth Strout

  Sea, Safety, World

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.211, Random House

  7 Copy quote

• Without a doubt my mother was an inspiration for my writing. This is true in many ways, but mostly because she is a wonderful storyteller, without even knowing it.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Mother, Inspiration, Writing

  4 Copy quote

• I love theater. I love sitting in an audience and having the actors right there, playing out what it means to be a human being.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Mean, Sitting, Actors

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• I've always been tremendously interested in criminal law. It goes to a deep interest I have in prisons and the criminal element, and what we do as a society with it. I've always been touched by the idea of criminality.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Law, Ideas, Criminals

  "Elizabeth Strout on 'The Burgess Boys'". Interview with Dylan Foley, www.chicagotribune.com. March 23, 2013.

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• If you get divorced in New York, you go into therapy and will talk to anybody you meet on the sidewalk about it.

  Elizabeth Strout

  New York, Sidewalk, Therapy

  "Elizabeth Strout on 'The Burgess Boys'". Interview with Dylan Foley, www.chicagotribune.com. March 23, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• Each of his son's had been his favorite child.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Children, Son, Favorite Child

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.78, Random House

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• Back and forth she went each morning by the river, spring arriving once again; foolish, foolish spring, breaking open its tiny buds, and what she couldn’t stand was how—for many years, really—she had been made happy by such a thing. She had not thought she would ever become immune to the beauty of the physical world, but there you were. The river sparkled with the sun that rose, enough that she needed her sunglasses.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Morning, Spring, Years

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.258, Random House

  4 Copy quote

• I don't think there was a particular book that made me want to write. They all did. I always wanted to write.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Book, Writing, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• He would not let her go. Even though, staring into her open eyes in the swirling salt-filled water, with sun flashing though each wave, he thought he would like this moment to be forever: the dark-haired woman on shore calling for their safety, the girl who had once jumped rope like a queen, now holding him with a fierceness that matched the power of the ocean—oh, insane, ludicrous, unknowable world! Look how she wanted to live, look how she wanted to hold on.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Girl, Queens, Ocean

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.47, Random House

  8 Copy quote

• And yet, standing behind her son, waiting for the traffic light change, she remembered how in the midst of it all there had been a time when she'd felt a loneliness so deep that once, not so many years ago, having a cavity filled, the dentist's gentle turning of her chin with his soft fingers had felt to her like a tender kindness of almost excruciating depth, and she had swallowed with a groan of longing, tears springing to her eyes.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Kindness, Loneliness, Eye

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.224, Random House

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• She didn't like to be alone. Even more, she didn't like being with people. (148)

  Elizabeth Strout

  People

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• You surely know that in the course of a long marriage it is not unusual for a husband or a wife to develop a crush on someone else.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Crush, Husband, Long

  Source: www.bookbrowse.com

  8 Copy quote

• By the time they were pulling into the parking lot of the A&P, the mood was fading, the moment gone. Amy could feel it go. Perhaps it was nothing more than the two doughnuts expanding in her stomach full of milk, but Amy felt a heaviness begin, a familiar turning of some inward tide. As they drove over the bridge the sun seemed to move from a cheerful daytime yellow to an early-evening gold; painful how the gold light hit the riverbanks, rich and sorrowful, drawing from Amy some longing, a craving for joy.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Moving, Two, Yellow

  Elizabeth Strout (2003). “Amy and Isabelle: A Novel”, p.56, Vintage

  9 Copy quote

• For years I did most of my reading on the F train between Brooklyn and Manhattan. I had long commutes, and I read tons of books on that train; I loved it.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Book, Reading, Years

  4 Copy quote

• Oh, I wish I organized my books. But I don't. I'm not an organized person. The best I can do is put the books I really like in one sort of general area, and poetry in another.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Book, Wish, Organized

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• The appetites of the body were private battles.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Battle, Body, Appetite

  Elizabeth Strout (2008). “Olive Kitteridge: Fiction”, p.89, Random House

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• My first job was when I was about 12, cleaning houses in the afternoons for different elderly women in town. I hated it.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Jobs, Elderly, House

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• She remembered was hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.

  Elizabeth Strout

  Moving, Water, Plowing

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